


Little Boy Blue and the Man on the Moon

by ropememory



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Community: inception_kink, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-30
Updated: 2011-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-23 06:26:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ropememory/pseuds/ropememory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for <a href="http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/19632.html?thread=46266032#t46266032">this prompt</a> on inception_kink.  (If you don’t want to click through, it’s kid!fic, just as a head’s up.)</p>
    </blockquote>





	Little Boy Blue and the Man on the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/19632.html?thread=46266032#t46266032) on inception_kink. (If you don’t want to click through, it’s kid!fic, just as a head’s up.)

A nanny would probably make everything easier. It would also be hands-off parenting, and Robert went through that, went through not quite knowing if his parents cared or even knew he existed, and that was the opposite of what he wanted his own son to feel. So, even though it’d be _easier,_ it wasn’t an option. Which is why Robert was now about to pull his hair out in frustration. He was trying, really, _really_ trying, but nothing seemed to be working out. Hostile corporate takeovers were easier than dealing with a five-year-old, at this point.

“I don’t _wanna_ wear that!” Nick exclaimed from his spot on the bed, pointing his nose up at the shirt Robert had pulled out of the drawer.

“What about this one?” Robert asked, selecting a different one and showing it to him.

“No! I want the dinosaur!”

Robert set both of the shirts down and walked over to Nick, crouching down so he would be at eye level. “You wore that yesterday. It’s dirty. You can’t wear it again until it gets washed.” Nick stared at him, bottom lip beginning to quiver. Robert knew that look--knew he had about ten seconds before there was crying involved, and he had another fleeting thought about a nanny. “How about you wear something else today, and I make sure to wash the dinosaur shirt tonight so you can wear it tomorrow?” He wouldn’t really have time that night, though, at least not if he wanted to sleep much more than a few hours, because he had planned on working once Nick was asleep since he’d taken too many days off when daycare wasn’t an option, but _anything_ was better than crying. Robert never quite knew the best way to handle crying, when it happened.

Nick nodded, and agreed, and Robert managed to internalize his sigh of relief as he went to get a shirt from the dresser.

\--

Nick’s mother had been a brief fling, shortly after Robert had broken up Fisher-Morrow, when there wasn’t anyone in his life who cared about _him,_ and most people he had known for years wanted less to do with him than the dirt that ended up on the bottom of their shoes. When she had told him that she was pregnant, the first thing he had asked was if she knew for sure it was his. He might have deserved the slap when it came, seconds later. He stuck with her, through the pregnancy, because he might have been Robert Fischer, Jr., dissolver of empires, but he wasn’t a complete cad.

And then, two days after both mother and baby were released from the hospital, she had disappeared, leaving their son behind.

\--

Business trips were nearly impossible tasks piled on top of days of pouting. They involved either taking Nick with him and trying to find a babysitter in a random city or the guilt that came with pawning his son off on someone else for a night if he couldn’t get to and from the meeting in a day. He had tried video conferencing instead for most of them, or sending a proxy, but sometimes they had insisted on meeting him, in person, or else there would be no attempt to discuss _anything._

Trying to explain that to Nick, though, never went over well. The day before he left and the day he came back were always an exercise in patience, because there was crying and tantrums and the silent treatment and Robert was waiting for the “you don’t care about me” that he was sure was going to come out one day.

\--

“I want a story,” Nick said as Robert was about to turn out the light and leave.

Robert hesitated, turning back around to face Nick. “That’s not how you ask,” he said, stalling for time. Were there even any books in the house that weren’t huge, dusty and boring? He had a newspaper in his briefcase, but it was doubtful the business section would qualify as appropriate bedtime reading. Maybe if he Google’d something on his phone?

“I want a story, _please._ ” Robert could hear the eye roll that came with the statement, even if he couldn’t see one.

He moved the chair so that he’d be next to the bed before sitting down. “Well, uh. What do you want a story about?”

“Pirates!” Nick replied, grinning.

Robert could do pirates. He could totally do pirates. Pirates were just CEOs on ships, after all. “Once upon a time,” Robert began, because how else are you supposed to start a bedtime story? “There was a really, really mean pirate by the name of... Howard.” And yeah, okay, maybe he was projecting because Mitchell Howard was the jerk who had yelled at Robert for three hours on the phone that morning about ROIs and stockholders and scary pirate names were hard to come up with off the top of one’s head. “And, uhm, he sailed across the Pacific looking for other ships to plunder so that he could be the richest pirate in all the oceans of the world. He was so mean that he never took any prisoners, when he was stealing from other ships. He just let them float away on a boat that had no food or supplies or treasure.”

Nick’s eyes were closed more than they were open now, and there were periodic yawns as well, which meant Robert just needed a few more minutes before he could slip out of the room, to the relative safety of a desk and documents that didn’t require much creativity.

“Howard was a successful pirate, because he had a lot of crew members and lots of stolen goods, and most of the other pirates feared him. Until one day a _new_ pirate, who spent most of his time in the Indian Ocean, decided he wanted to branch out and conquer something else.” Robert paused when Nick’s eyes hadn’t opened for awhile. When there didn’t seem to be any protests that he had stopped talking, Robert quietly got up, kissed Nick on the forehead, before walking over to turn off the light and close the door behind him.

Robert was definitely going to have to run by a bookstore and pick up something for next time.

\--

Robert’s fairly certain Mrs. Richards, the woman who runs the daycare center Nick goes to, hates him. On a good day, he manages to get there by 6, when they close, but most of the time he’s running late because of traffic or work and it’s after six and she glares at him like she can’t believe someone put _him_ in charge of taking care of a child. He figures the only reason they haven’t made him go elsewhere is because of the sizable donation he gives each quarter.

Of course, they might, this time, because it’s 6:30 and he still hadn’t left the office and they’d been calling for the past fifteen minutes. He hadn’t answered, though, for the same reason he still hadn’t left--the meeting that was supposed to end two hours ago had dragged on and devolved into bickering and insults and _no one_ seemed to want to listen to him when he said they should call it a night and start fresh in the morning. And he’d just get up and leave, if he could, but then they might not even agree to meet later and the company _really_ needed this deal to go through.

“Look,” Robert said, standing up. “I was supposed to pick up my son a half hour ago. We’re getting _nowhere,_ at this point. Either we agree to continue this in the morning, when I’m not being called every two minutes by the daycare center to find out _where the hell I am,_ or we finalize a deal in the next...” Robert glanced at his watch. “five minutes.”

The rest of the people in the meeting stared at him, before a chorus of “Let’s meet in the morning”’s broke out.

“Fantastic,” Robert said, and he walked out the door.

Traffic, luckily, had died down enough that it didn’t take as long as it could have to get to the daycare. However, if there had been any luck involved at all, it quickly died the second Robert walked into the front office.

“So nice of you to stop by, Mr. Fischer,” Mrs. Richards said when he walked in, and there was definitely nothing _nice_ about her tone.

“I’m so, so sorry. There was just--”

Mrs. Richards held up a hand to stop him. “I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”

One of the aides brings Nick in then, and the glare he’s giving Robert is worse than anything Mrs. Richards could have possibly said.

“You’re late,” Nick said,

“I know, and--” Robert started, but Nick interrupted him.

“I wanna go home.”

“Okay, okay. We’ll... we’ll go home right now,” Robert agreed, swallowing becoming more difficult than it should be.

He tried talking, on the way home, but the crossed arms and lack of acknowledgement proved to be impressive adversaries to an apology.

Nick didn’t decide Robert was worth talking to until it was time for a bath.

“You work too much,” Nick said as one of the toy boats ran over the bubbles and a floating dinosaur.

“I know,” Robert replied, sitting on the floor with his sleeves rolled up past his elbows and pants wet from the water where some had splashed over the edge when Nick had gotten in. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.”

“Be the dinosaur,” Nick said, picking up the dinosaur that the boat had just run over and handing it to Robert.

“What am I doing with the dinosaur?” Robert asked, as he had it walk across the edge of the tub.

“Being forgiven,” Nick replied.

Robert was okay with not being a perfect father, as long as he tried his best and it meant he could have moments like this.


End file.
